View and print the complete guide in a pdf file. - Utah ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

eing flung from person to person, tossed above heads and below belts.In fact, most of the humor in Blithe Spirit turns on the question, who knows the most? Theaudience and the Condomines begin on the same level, educated and worldly and convinced thatall this spiritual business is nonsense. Then the level of awareness shifts, with the audience andCharles joining Madame Arcati in knowing that ghosts exist, and Ruth’s skepticism now makesher the foolish one. Then there is another shift--Charles and Ruth know about Elvira and attemptto conceal their knowledge from the Bradmans. Toward the end, Charles, Ruth, Elvira, and theaudience know even more than Madame Arcati about ghosts and their behavior. These changinglevels of awareness keep the farce from falling flat after the first scene or two of miscommunicationbetween the real world and the other side; nobody, especially the playgoer, can be quite sure ofwhat he knows.Blithe Spirit:Some Sort of GeniusBy Susan E. Gunter8Utah Shakespeare Festival351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880
From Souvenir Program, 1992In his autobiography, Future Indefinite, Noel Coward says that he completed Blithe Spiritin six days: “When the right note is struck and the structure of a play is carefully built inadvance, it is both wise and profitable to start at the beginning and write through to the endin as short a time as possible.” Coward had indeed struck the right note. Blithe Spirit openedon July 2, 1941, in the Piccadilly Theatre in London and became an instant and overwhelmingsuccess. The play ran for a record-setting four and one-half years (1,997 performances). Perhapsthe play represented Coward’s gift to a war-weary nation. On opening night the audiencewalked across planks laid over the debris from a recent air raid to enter the fanciful ghost-riddenworld that Coward had created, a world he himself said was “on a plane just above reality.”Blithe Spirit opens with a mature, sophisticated married couple, Charles and RuthCondomine, who live rational and orderly lives in the English countryside near Kent. WriterCharles, who is beginning a new novel called The Unseen (one of the play’s many small ironies),has asked medium Madame Arcati to come to their home and conduct a séance as partof his “research” for the book. Madame Arcati, a delightful character who goes everywhereon her bicycle and has most recently written a children’s book featuring a moss beetle as hero,challenges all of the Condomines’ rational assumptions concerning reality in a drawing roomcomedy of the highest order.Madame Arcati, using as her control a child named Daphne, proceeds in her séance to callup the ghost (“protoplasmic manifestation”) of Charles’s first wife, Elvira, who has been deadfor seven years. As the gramophone plays the tune, “Always,” the table bangs about, MadameArcati screams and falls from her stool, and Charles hears a ghostly voice.Elvira, whose flamboyant and irreverent personality contrasts markedly with Ruth’s sensible,efficient nature, can be seen and heard by Charles but no one else. Much of the play’s subsequentwry humor turns on the device of double meanings: Charles’s remarks to the ghostlyElvira are heard and misunderstood by Ruth, providing in effect a dramatic and exaggeratedillustration of how married couples often fail to communicate to one another. Ruth, at firstskeptical of Elvira’s “reality,” seeks formulaic explanations for Charles’s odd behavior, attributinghis strange remarks to too much alcohol or a nervous breakdown.Elvira’s blithe attitude counterpoints Ruth’s stolidness, and even Madame Arcati, who whencalled back to the house later refuses to try to recall Elvira because she has just eaten pigeon pieand cucumber sandwiches for lunch, tells Ruth that, “there are more things in heaven and earththan are dreamt of in your philosophy, Mrs. Condomine.”As Elvira’s “blithe spirit” turns bad, however, the audience must be willing to suspenddisbelief and accept the play’s ghostly conventions. Elvira upsets the balance that Charles andRuth have created in their relationship, making them realize that their rules of conduct do notapply in the larger context of the unexplainable mysteries of life and death, as Coward’s farcicalplotting and witty dialogue combine to produce a technically skillful play that has entertainedaudiences for over four decades.Blithe Spirit:Noel Coward as the Mirror of aGenerationBy Lynnette L. HornerUtah Shakespeare Festival351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-78809
Page 1 and 2: InsightsA Study Guide to the Utah S
Page 3: Blithe SpiritContentsInformation on
Page 7: On January 1, 1970, Coward was hono
Page 11: Graham Payn, and Sheridan Morely, N

View and print the complete guide in a pdf file. - Utah ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?